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Millennial Women Embrace Email Newsletters

The most interesting innovation in digital publishing over the past few months hasn't been the launch of some cutting-edge new app, but the surprising rebirth of the email newsletter.

American writer-actress Lena Dunham has gathered the most column inches recently with her Lenny Letter, a weekly email featuring essays and fiction, alongside interviews with Dunham’s coterie of celeb friends (most recently US star Jennifer Lawrence, who used the forum to speak out about equal pay for actresses in Hollywood).

The Lenny Letter takes its lead from American actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s much-mocked Goop, but its real antecedent is the hugely successful newsletter The Skimm. This was launched in 2013 with the aim of becoming a one-stop destination for millennial women to get their news fix every morning. From humble beginnings it now boasts 1.5 million subscribers and a $6m investment from San Francisco-based venture capitalists Homebrew.

Alongside UK female-focused newsletter The Pool, what all these platforms share is an understanding of their millennial audience: they reach for their smartphones as soon as they wake up; they’re on-the-go, so prefer content in bite-sized chunks; and they’re also looking for something a little more personal than the barrage of news and gifs churned out by the likes of BuzzFeed.